


the fight began and now it's all we know

by ohlawsons



Series: mass effect fic [3]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Mass Effect 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-12 05:40:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11730633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohlawsons/pseuds/ohlawsons
Summary: She doesn’t fall to her knees, not in front of the colonist and Jacob and Kasumi, butgoddoes she want to; she’s exhausted, and the ache spreads to her bones and she’s too tired to cry anymore but it doesn’t matter, because they’re going to get those colonists — and Kaidan — back if it kills her.ME2 AU where Kaidan is taken by the Collectors on Horizon.





	the fight began and now it's all we know

She loses track of how many times she calls out his name.

Out here, in the field, on a mission, it had always been Alenko, or Lieutenant. Never Kaidan, not like it is now as she tears through the colony, checking prefab after empty prefab, searching every chitinous Collector pod she tears open. She can feel Jacob watching her with something that’s not quite pity, and Kasumi offers something that’s almost comfort and nearly understanding — not that it matters, not that Alyssa cares what they say or think about this rare display of complete helplessness, as long as they help her search.

She calls his name out again, voice hoarse and throat straining, and doesn’t think about how many times she’s already called for him.

(She doesn’t think about the last time she was like this — entirely helpless and repeating his name over and over in desperation. Doesn’t think of her back arcing against the bed, of the warmth of his body pressed against her, of the charge of their combined biotics leaving the room wreathed in a blue glow. Doesn’t think of his lips, soft and searching — neck, collarbone, stomach — and the strain in his own voice as he says her name. She doesn’t think about it, and it doesn’t make his absence feel any more acute as she searches.)

They’re running out of thermal clips and Kasumi’s bleeding and there doesn’t seem to be an end to the Collectors. When they finally get the colony defenses online, there’s relief but Alyssa doesn’t share it, not yet; the Collector ship leaves, half the colonists on-board, and she still hasn’t found Kaidan. _We_ _’ll keep searching_ , she tells herself, but as she stands in the middle of the quiet colony and listens as one of the few survivors throws insults and demands at her — _they_ _’re gone_ , he says, _and it_ _’s all the Alliance’s fault_ — she doesn’t argue, and tries not to show the spike of terror that shoots through her when he confirms her fears.

_They took her, they took Lilith_ , he claims, gesturing to the empty sky, _and that Alliance soldier. Good riddance_.

She doesn’t fall to her knees, not in front of the colonist and Jacob and Kasumi, but _god_ does she want to; she’s exhausted, and the ache spreads to her bones and she’s too tired to cry anymore but it doesn’t matter, because they’re going to get those colonists — and Kaidan — back if it kills her.

They go back to the Normandy and she reports in, and she’s shaking as she listens to The Illusive Man. He _knew_. Of course he did, because he set it all up, engineered the disaster that devastated Horizon and took Kaidan from her. She can’t hold herself back, this time, and she snaps and tells him to never, ever threaten anyone she cares about again; there’s fire in her eyes and venom in her voice and The Illusive Man has the audacity to look _pleased_.

She leaves her armor scattered around her cabin and falls into bed without showering, and sleeps until the nightmares wake her.

* * *

 

_Why didn_ _’t you tell me_ , she asks Anderson, and maybe the words are an accusation but the waver in her voice and her white-knuckled grip on the railing she leans on is all _fear_.

He gives her exactly the answer she expects — _it_ _’s classified; Alliance business; Cerberus can’t be trusted_ — and she doesn’t argue. Six weeks, and Kaidan’s been classified as MIA; she knows Anderson held things back as long as he could, but a Cerberus operative insisting that an Alliance officer wasn’t _missing_ — she knows right where he is, after all, just doesn’t know how to get him back — can only delay things for so long.

But it’s official, now, and it’s like learning to breathe all over again as the panic and terror and rage all hit her at once.

(She lays in her cabin and stares out at the stars and wonders if it was better or worse, for Kaidan, when he’d lost her. Not knowing — that’s _hard_. But if she searches hard enough, claws her way past the despair and pain and hopelessness, there’s still a _possibility_ that he’s alive and she clings to that sliver of a chance like her life depends on it. She wouldn’t trade that for _certainty_ , not ever, not even if it could alleviate the images that bore into her mind and the fear of finding him in one of those pods.)

The Illusive Man remains as satisfied as ever, and Alyssa almost entertains the idea that he somehow _ensured_ that Kaidan was taken, if only to further tighten the choke-hold he had on her loyalty. But that’s beyond even his abilities, she thinks, and somehow that makes his attitude towards the entire situation even more unbearable.

She tells him so, when they’re alone over the vidcomm and there’s no one to keep her from snapping. His methods are vile, and repulsive, and the worst part is that they’re _working_.

* * *

 

Four months.

Four months pass after Horizon before EDI calls her to say the crew is gone.

They’ve been falling towards the mission through the Omega-4 relay for weeks now, but it’s a controlled descent — Alyssa refuses to go until they’re absolutely prepared, refuses to leave anything up to chance when they can be certain things can go right.

But as she returns to an empty ship — walks through near-silent halls, flinches at the unexpectedly thunderous sound of a door hissing open in the eerie quiet of the CIC, sits in the shower with her back against the wall and lets the water run over her until it chills her just so she can be surrounded by some sort of _sound_ — she can’t help but think of the similarly empty colony they left.

Prefabs with half-prepared meals on the counter, or workstations with monitors that idle on a screensaver — both make her want to be sick. She closes her eyes and it’s all she sees, all the stillness and those damn pods; all of a sudden the shower isn’t enough and it’s too _quiet_ so she curses just to fill the silence. She turns the water off and wraps herself in a towel, leaving the shower to sit on the edge of her bed and _listen_ ; she can hear the Normandy, from here, can hear how she hums and sings.

It’s different than before, Alyssa thinks, but so is she. She tells EDI to head for the relay, then closes her eyes and falls asleep to the song of her ship.

* * *

 

They’re halfway through the Collector base before she begins to see familiar faces in the grotesque pods that seem to hold an impossible amount of humans. There isn’t anything that they can do — that they know of, yet, but EDI’s searching for controls or _something_ that will release them — so they look for the colonists and the crew and Kaidan.

(She never told them to keep an eye out, never said he was one of the most important reasons to find the missing colonists, but the crew still _knew_. When she’d given out orders after their crash landing her voice hadn’t shaken, but her hands had. Her grip on her shotgun was too tight, her stance too tense, and no one needed to ask to know that as much as she wanted to find Chakwas and Kelly and the others, it’s Kaidan’s face she’s so desperately searching for.)

They’re exhausted and worn down and close to losing hope  when they find their crew, and as much as it lifts everyone’s spirits, it leaves a pit in Alyssa’s stomach that grows with every section of pods they clear. Two more tunnels down and they first see the liquefaction process; she rushes forward and slams on the pod and claws at the opening but it’s no use, so she stumbles down the row and chokes back something that might be a curse and might be a sob.

The next pod is liquefied.

She’s running, now, searching and demanding that EDI find a solution because this isn’t acceptable; she’s not thinking about Kaidan — she can’t, she won’t allow herself to — but knowing that this is the fate that awaits every human in this ship, every colonist she couldn’t save, is enough to make her dizzy.

The next pod is liquefied.

She’s frantic, but they _all_ are, to an extent, given the dire circumstances and this _nightmare_ they’re traveling through. When she finds him, locked inside one of the pods, it shakes her almost as much as losing him had and she tears at the pod until it hisses open and Kaidan falls to his knees on the ground in front of her.

She kneels down beside him, her hands cradling his face as his eyes — unfocused and glossy with confusion but the same whiskey gold she remembers so well — search around him, darting from her to the base to the crew behind her before resting on her face. He says her name but she misses it, the word drowned out by her own stammering as she tries to comfort them both.

_You_ _’re alive. You’re okay. We’re here._

She was dead, the last time he saw her, and she knows there were rumors but it can’t compare to actually seeing her again, alive and well. She wants nothing more than to continue to sit there with him, to never take her eyes from him, to re-learn and re-memorize every line and curve of his features; his lips part, and she waits — eager to hear his voice again — but he says nothing and pulls her close instead, holding onto her like he has no intentions of ever letting go.

When he does speak, she can only make out some of the words — her name, repeated over and over; hesitant admissions, of missing her and mourning her and doubting her; quiet confusion, working through the fact that he isn’t dead, and she isn’t dead, and they’re alive and they’re safe — and she sits and listens and keeps the truth of their mission from him for as long as she can.

The instant betrayal in his expression when she says _Cerberus_ is tempered by his exhaustion, but it’s enough to sting and she rocks back on her heels and puts some small amount of space between them. He’ll need time — she had, too — but they don’t have it, not here and now, so she helps him to his feet and gives his hand a squeeze and sends him back to the Normandy with the crew.

_We_ _’re here to save these people_ , she tells him as he goes, and maybe he won’t understand but he’s _alive_ and that’s enough.

* * *

 

He’s on bedrest — orders from Chakwas as she moves from crew member to crew member, checking and assessing and cataloging the myriad of injuries and traumas brought back from the Collector base — but the medbay is already filled with patients, and Alyssa doesn’t hesitate to offer up her own quarters.

It’s awkward, at first, trying to explain the past several months and her association with a terrorist organization, but she walks him through it as they begin their trip back to the Citadel. _I_ _’ll need time to process… everything_ , he says to her, and she can tell that he’s fighting against the meds to stay awake so she leaves him, slowly making her way to the bridge and sitting beside Joker without a word. She doesn’t blame Kaidan, and she can’t imagine what he’s been through, but the suspicion in his eyes is eating away at her so she reminds herself that he’s alive and that’s what matters.

He’s alive.


End file.
